Other people can feel the amount of love you give yourself

When you walk into a coffee shop and are ladened with insecurity, the people around you can feel that. At all times, we are emitting energy that other people are picking up on, many times subconsciously. While advertising would have us believe that attractiveness is something we can achieve, it is, in fact, something that we must be for ourselves, first and foremost.

Don’t allow others to tell you how you should feel about yourself

Our culture’s definition of beauty is rigid, to say the least. At any given point, you can turn on the television, open up a website, read a magazine that will tell you exactly who you are on the attractiveness scale, lumping you into a group based solely on physical traits. But, this is your life and you define how you feel about yourself. That’s the beauty of humanity, we can just up and decide who we are and create that reality. Do that, create that, stop listening to anything or anyone that tries to tell you who you are or how you should feel based on your combination of physical attributes.

Find out the truth of who you are

Shape-shifting into what you think is the ideal attractiveness actually ends up being unattractive. Get to know yourself. Understand what it is about you that makes you extraordinary. Be more than your body and your face. Let your humor and your intelligence and your particular brand of uniqueness shine through without provocation or hesitance. A person who knows who they are and what they have to offer is an attractive one.

Ask yourself why you’re holding back love

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

Ask yourself, why am I holding back love not just from myself, but from others? Self-compassion and self-love don’t just have benefits to you, but emanate a kind of unparalleled attractiveness. At the end of the day, all anyone wants is to feel loved and held and understood; some people are just better at denying themselves this desire. When you have compassion and love towards yourself, you can’t help but be attractive to people around you. If you are a light and you walk directly into a dark room, what happens? The room fills with light.

Understand that people treat you how you treat yourself

Despite what the outside world will try to convince you of, you will be treated in the same way that you treat yourself. If you are kind and gentle to yourself, you will be treated in the same way. (You may be shaking your head furiously at me right now insistent that this is not true, but it is! Most of us just have never experienced how the world treats us when we are kind and gentle to ourselves, because it’s very, very, very difficult to be truly kind and gentle to ourselves.) The people around you are but a projection of how you perceive yourself. Anyone who has done significant inner work can attest to the fact that, when they have showered themselves with kindness first, others jump on board.

Then again, understand that it’s not about you

If someone has done something unkind to you, it’s not about you. If the barista at Starbucks was rude to you, it’s not about you (unless you were a jerk, then, well, you can lie in the hole you dug for yourself there). When you treat yourself kindly and have compassion for yourself, another person’s rudeness will not bother you and, in fact, you’ll show them even more compassion. Learning to not take things personally is a universally attractive trait, as people are more likely to be drawn to you if they feel that you will treat them with kindness and understanding.

Give more weight to the kindness you receive

Focus not on the moments of rudeness or frustration from other people. Fixate on the kindness you receive and watch it multiply. If, after a day of work, you could spend more of your brainpower or more of your happy hour discussing the love you received, versus the love that was withheld from you, then you will find yourself attracting more people and more situations that will uplift you.

Give genuine compliments

People instantly like people who like them. Remember how favorably you responded the last time someone paid you a true compliment? Almost instantaneously, you thought, “Damn, this person is attractive and has great taste.” Give compliments without reservations, not because you want people to like you, but because you acknowledge the light in them and want to show them that you see them and appreciate them. Give compliments to strangers. No matter how put-together you may think someone is, that person could need that compliment more than you could ever know. Give enthusiastically and without resistance.

Send love and light to other people

If someone is bothering or annoying you, take a step back and send them love and light. Not only will you instantly feel better about them, but they will probably end up being more bearable to you. Send love and light often and without prejudice. Standing in line at the grocery store or stuck in traffic, send love and light to everyone around you. Open your heart often and more than you thought possible. The light and love in you will attract more people than you’ll be ready for. (Believe me, I started doing this and I am constantly approached by strangers who just want to compliment me. Seriously.)

Smile and make eye contact with people

This is probably the simplest and easiest one to add into your life right now. There is absolutely nothing that can replace the magnitude of a genuine smile and eye contact. Practice doing this with baristas or checkout clerks and see how surprised they are when you look at them and ask how they are with interest and intent. Plus, your kindness could have a compounding effect. The next person in line could get the effects of a kinder, happier barista because of the light you shone on them initially.

While you may think attraction is a birthright that only a small percentage of people have been awarded with, it’s truly not. It is as much a reflection of your outer self as your inner self and the more light you can shine out, the more you’ll see that people are inconceivably drawn to you.

Depression is real. Anxiety is real. PTSD is real. ALL mental illnesses are real. Don’t believe anyone who is trying to tell you otherwise.

Every time I’m stressed I distract myself with doing something nice for someone else and it’s the best thing on this planet to watch someone’s eyes light up because they weren’t expecting something nice to happen.